Collaborative Research: University Commitment to Interdisciplinary Research: Scope, Causes, and Consequences

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

To foster innovation and address important questions facing society, interdisciplinary research (IDR), which integrates perspectives from two or more disciplines, is being promoted by federal and state funding agencies. However there is little evidence about how well universities are engaging with IDR, the types of institutional commitments they provide, or what the consequences are for the conduct of scientific research and the performance of universities. Previous research examines individual scientists' engagement in IDR, but they miss the larger institutional context, which the current project studies. The results from this project are of interest to university administrators, funding agencies, and science policy experts as they decide how to invest in research and which aspects of university commitment to IDR are most effective for promoting specific goals (e.g., scholarly research output, commercial output, and prestige), allowing them to make informed decisions about where to focus their investments. This project constructs a comprehensive dataset, develops multiple measures of university commitment to IDR, and provides the first empirical study of its causes and consequences. The research team is compiling data on all (157) top U.S. research universities from multiple sources to create a unique university-level dataset. After developing measures of university commitment to IDR, statistical regression techniques are employed in two stages. In the first stage of analysis, regression models test which factors promote engagement with IDR. Possible factors include resource reductions (e.g., declines in state funding or university ranking) as well as pressures and incentives to pursue IDR that emanate from funding agencies, university administrators, and faculty (e.g., grants targeted to multidisciplinary teams). In the second stage of analysis, regression models assess how engagement with IDR affects universities and scientific progress, specifically scholarly research output (e.g. publications and citations), commercial research output (e.g., patents), and/or prestige (e.g., university rankings).